This invention relates to systems for the automated generation of information that is used to manage both a facility and the services that are provided by the staff employed at the facility, with a high degree of integration and cross-correlation among the diverse attributes of the facility, the professional staff employed at the facility staff and the services provided therein by the staff.
It is a problem in the operation of a facility to efficiently manage the physical plant of the facility and also obtain the most efficient use of the staff that is employed at the facility. There are numerous computer programs that address segments of this problem and provide narrowly focused solutions to particularly common problems. Examples of such programs are the class of household budget/accounting programs that function to replicate the user""s checkbook and provide a report generation capability based upon the checkbook data to thereby enable the user to track expenses and implement a household budget. There are also inventory programs that enable a user to document the contents and physical plant, specifics of a particular household. There are also employee management programs that enable the user to input employee data and implement the payroll and performance review functions.
However, each of these programs addresses only a single focused aspect of the management of a facility or its staff. There are significant voids in the field of facility and services management that are not addressed by any program. In addition, most of these programs are directed to an individual household of family members, with the program being run by one of the family members. This field is therefore devoid of a system that can provide the automated generation of information that is used to manage both a facility and the services that are provided by the staff employed at the facility, with a high degree of integration and cross-correlation among the diverse attributes of the facility and services provided therein by the professional staff employed at the facility. This is especially problematic in the field of professional services, such as the operation of managed care facilities, estate household management, and the like.
The above-described problems are solved and a technical advance achieved by the present system (termed xe2x80x9cfacility management systemxe2x80x9d herein) for the automated generation of information that is used to manage both a facility and the staff employed at the facility, with a high degree of integration and cross-correlation among the diverse attributes of the facility and services provided therein by the professional staff employed at the facility. The present facility management system implements a multi-dimensional relational database to support the service delivery functions within a facility as well as the management of the physical plant that comprises the facility. The preferred embodiment described herein is that of estate household management, wherein a professional staff is provided to operate an estate facility for a set of owners who may or may not reside full-time in the facility. The facility management system provides the capability to measure service expectations in both time and execution details while setting up the service delivery by means of the database capability contained therein.
One module of the facility management system provides for the identification of all of the components of the facility, including structure location, architecture, components, contents and personal possessions of the residents. This capability is termed xe2x80x9cHousehold Inventory Module.xe2x80x9d Another module comprises the People Module that provides the identification of all of the people who are associated with the facility, including residents, guests, visitors, staff, contractors and the like. This component enables the entry of individual-specific data that provides an in-depth definition of the individual, their characteristics that are relevant to the facility management and the provision of the services. The facility management system uses these modules, as well as others, to identify all work that is to be done by the staff as well as by contractors. The work is defined in terms of Tasks that are linked to physical attributes of the facility as well as to staff to produce Task Sheets that are integrated coherent descriptions of Tasks that are assigned to Staff. The linking enables the efficient definition of Tasks in terms of physical locale, timeliness, elimination of redundancy of operation, minimization of work effort, thereby rendering the effecting of these Tasks economical. Each of the modules of the present facility management system forges an information link with other information modules in the system and the data contained therein to address the key issues of Who, What, Where, When to thereby enable the definition of the Tasks.
The provision of personal service in an estate management environment is an art form that far transcends the ordinary definition of xe2x80x9chousekeepingxe2x80x9d as it is commonly used. In particular, this requires a service relationship between the Household Manager and the principals of the family. The service relationship comprises a high level of communication and understanding of the intimate personal needs of the residents and guests to enable the Household Manager to provide the organization, technical knowledge, professionalism and discretion to the provision of the desired services.